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DDR3 Shipments to Surpass DDR2 in 2010, says Supplier

Paul Lilly — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:40:09 -0600

We've been seeing signs of a market shift for some time now, and by the second quarter of 2010, global DDR3 shipments will finally surpass DDR2 for the first time, says market research firm iSuppli.

According to iSuppli, DDR3 is on pace to claim 50.9 percent of the market in Q2 2010, barely edging out DDR2. But what's most impressive is that DDR3's market share sat at only 14.2 percent in Q2 2009, and just 1 percent in Q2 2008.

"DDR3 is 50 percent faster than today's dominant DRAM technology, DDR2, while using about 30 percent less power," said Mike Howard, senior DRAM analyst for iSuppli. "For PC users across the board, this means faster performance. For notebook users, it can result in longer battery life."

Claiming a little over half of the market will be just the beginning, and iSuppli forecasts DDR3 will account for 71 percent of all DRAM by the end of next year.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Both Intel and AMD fully embrace the DDR3 standard, and while DDR2 used to enjoy a pricing advantage, that gap recently closed all but completely.

Image Credit: Corsair

Scythe Mugen 2

Nathan Edwards — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:30:24 -0600

Bulky, but it gets the job done

They just keep getting bigger and bigger. Now that CPU air-cooling manufacturers have seemingly settled on the skyscraper school of heatsink design, there seems to be a competition over who can cram the most cooling fins into the largest area. Scythe’s Mugen 2 air cooler, the follow-up to its popular Mugen series, is one of the largest coolers of this type that we’ve ever tested. But can it match the cooling power of its slightly smaller cousins, such as Thermalright’s U-120 eXtreme?

The Mugen 2 is a hefty hunk of a cooler, at 5.1 inches wide, 5 inches deep (with the included 12cm fan), and 6.2 inches high; it weighs nearly two pounds. It’s not the heaviest cooler we’ve ever tested, nor the most unwieldy, but its girth could certainly prevent you from installing it in all orientations on all motherboards. We had trouble fitting it in some orientations on our EVGA 680i SLI board—our usual preference being to install the cooler fan parallel with the rear exhaust fan. On our board, though, there wasn’t room; we resorted to attaching the cooler fan perpendicular to the rear exhaust fan. Thankfully, this didn’t seem to impact performance, as the Mugen 2 performed slightly better in our tests than the Thermalright U120-eXtreme—about 2.25 C cooler at both idle and full CPU burn.

The Mugen 2 pushes the upper limit on air-cooler size, but we'll allow it. This time.

The Mugen 2 ships with mounting brackets for LGA1366, 775, and AMD boards; the first two use the same bracket and backplate but different screw holes. Support for the new LGA1156 socket wasn’t available at the time of this review, but the company states it is in the works. Installation requires motherboard removal or a motherboard tray with a backplane cutout. Each of its five copper heat pipes rises into its own separate stack of cooling fins, allowing airflow between the stacks.

If you opt to use the included 12cm fan, you might have to tweak your motherboard fan control settings due to its four-pin PWM connector. We manually set the fan control to 100 percent for testing, after the motherboard’s fan control resulted in significantly higher temperatures.

You can attach up to four 12cm fans to the Mugen 2—one to each face of the fin array—using the familiar thin wire clips found on similar coolers. Whether this actually helps, of course, is up for debate. We didn’t see any performance gains when we experimented with multiple fans on the Noctua NH-U12P and Thermalright U-120 eXtreme.

For laudable performance, a relatively easy install compared to its peers, and a lower price point, we’re awarding the Scythe Mugen 2 our Kick Ass Award. However, this is clearly the upper limit of how big a cooler can be and still earn a high recommendation. Hear that, vendors? Scale ‘em down a bit.

NZXT's Tempest EVO Chassis Holds 8 HDDs, Supports E-ATX

Paul Lilly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:00:58 -0600

NZXT has been on a roll churning out affordable cases that, at least on paper, appear to belie their low price tag with features typically reserved for more expensive enclosures. The same can be said for NZXT's newest chassis, the Tempest EVO.

Constructed of all black steel, the EVO edition expands on the original Tempest's design with better cooling potential and more attention to cable management schemes. Cooling duties are provided by four 120mm fans (dual intake, one side, and one rear). NZXT said it even redesigned the fan blades to push more air at lower noise levels.

The mid tower Tempest EVO targets enthusiasts looking for server-level performance. The E-ATX form factor is now supported, and there are slots for up to 8 hard drives.

"The original Tempest is one of our most successful designs due to its optimal airflow capabilities," said Johnny Hou, Chief Designer at NZXT. "With the additional improvements the Tempest EVO brings to the equation, it's destined to be a top performer in its class."

The Tempest EVO is available now for with an MSRP set to $100.

Image Credit: NZXT

Nvidia Posts Photo of Working Fermi Card

Paul Lilly — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:50:40 -0600

Perhaps looking to steal a bit of thunder from AMD's awesome HD 5970 videocard, Nvidia PR guy Brian Burke today posted a picture of the green team's upcoming Fermi-based graphics card. Isn't marketing fun?

On his Twitter account, Burke referred to the Fermi card as a GeForce 100, which he said is the first GeForce GPU based on the new architecture. A screenshot in the background shows the videocard running the Unigine Heaven DirectX 11 benchmark.

That's all that was said (and shown), but the bigger message is the unspoken one that says, "Hey, we're still here, and we're poised to kick AMD's tail." No one from Nvidia actually said that, mind you, but they might as well have if they're going to post a pic of their upcoming graphics card when the talk of the town is centered around AMD's flagship GPU.

Image Credit: Brian Burke, Nvidia

OCZ Releases 1TB Colossus 3.5" SSD, Makes Your Puny SSD Cry

Paul Lilly — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:00:12 -0600

There's no way around it - if SSDs are to eventually replace mechanical hard drives, manufacturers have to find a way to increase capacity at a reasonable cost. So far, every SSD vendor has failed on both accounts, which is why we're excited to see OCZ release a 1TB SSD.

Also available in the more traditional 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities, the new Colossus 3.5-inch SSD series brings no-holds barred performance to the scene, at least on paper. According to OCZ, each drive is capable of up to 260MB/s reads and writes, up to 220MB/s sustained writes, and up to 14,000 IOPS. That puts the Colossus right up there with the fastest spec'd drives on the market.

"The new Colossus Series is designed to boost desktop and workstation performance and is for high power users tht put a premium on speed, reliability, and maximum storage capacity," said Eugene Chang, VP of Product Management at OCZ. "The Colossus core-architecture is also available to enterprise clients with locked BOMs (build of materials) and customized firmware to match their unique applications."

A 1TB drive certainly makes headway on the capacity front, but the question is, how much will it cost? OCZ didn't say, though previous reports had the then-upcoming drive pegged at $2,500. Ouch.

Image Credit: OCZ

ATI Radeon HD 5970: The Undisputed Performance Champ

Loyd Case & Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0600

AMD’s Radeon HD 5970 takes the performance crown, and now offers DirectX 11 GPUs top to bottom.

You can forgive AMD for stealing a line from Nvidia’s playbook. From the name and marketing materials, it’s not obvious that this card is a dual GPU card. One AMD chart even refers to the card as the “ATI Radeon HD 5970 GPU,” much like Nvidia’s 295 GTX is a dual GPU card that’s sold as if it were a normal graphics card.

Let’s take a quick look at the speeds and feeds of the new card, and then discuss additional features. We’ll compare them to the Radeon HD 5870 single GPU card; there are differences in core and memory clock speeds.

ATI Radeon GPUs Compared

Model	HD 4870	HD 5970
GPU	Single HD 5870 GPU	Dual HD 5870 GPUs
Stream Processors	1600	3200
Core Clock	850MHz	725MHz
Memory	1GB 1200MHz GDDR5	2GB 1000MHz GDDR5
Texture Units	80	160
ROPs	32	64
Memory Data Rate	4.8Gbps	4.0Gbps
Compute Performance	2.72TFLOPs	4.64TFLOPs
Idle Power	27W	42W
Max Power	188W	294W

Most features simply double, since there are two identical GPUs with the same memory per GPU. However, note the memory bandwidth is lower, since the memory clock is lower. Also, overall compute performance isn’t quite double, since the engine clock for each GPU defaults to 725MHz, rather than the single GPU 5870’s 850MHz.

In addition to the paired GPUs, the card maximizes performance with a new second generation PLX PCI Express 2.1 bridge chip. This speeds up communications between the two GPUs.

The older Radeon HD 4870 X2, AMD’s last dual GPU card, often suffered from serious overheating problems, so AIT has taken steps to improve overall thermal efficiency. The first step is to used specially screened GPU chips with the minimum amount of leakage current. The thermal system consists of a vapor chamber, with heat dissipation via a fully vented exhaust system. Finally, a multipoint, programmable PWM fan controller ensures fan speeds consistent with overall thermal output. The whole affair is rated to dissipate 400W, or over 100W of headroom.

The use of low leakage GPUs suggests that the core clock speeds could be pushed higher than the default 725MHz. Given that the card can dissipate 400W of overall thermal output, ATI has decided to leave the card unlocked, letting users overclock it to their heart’s content. The company is even making available an overvoltage tool, and suggests that the card has enough headroom to push the engine clock to above the 850MHz of the single GPU HD 5870 and the memory speeds up to the 1200MHz of the 5870. In The HD 5970 also sports sophisticated digital voltage regulators, real time power monitoring and Japanese pure ceramic capacitors, which facilitate higher clock speeds. (The reason for the more conservative default clock speeds is that the company needs to make allowances for the thermal environment inside PC cases, which may be less optimal.)

What about power efficiency? The HD 5970 offers the same clock gating capability as the single GPU variant. In addition, the card offers an ultra low power state that puts one GPU to sleep, which cuts the overall power draw of that GPU by half the normal idle performance. The card idles at 42W, only 15W higher than the 27W of the HD 5870. Of course, the card sucks 294W at full throttle – and that’s at the default clock speeds. So you’ll need a power supply with the later PCI Express 8-pin power connector – the HD 5970 uses one eight pin and one six pin connector from the PSU.

The onboard connectors are slightly different from the original HD 5870: two DVI-I connectors and one mini-DisplayPort attachment, first popularized with Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops and iMacs. All three can be attached simultaneously, and drive three displays at the same time. Note that most DisplayPort enabled monitors which aren’t Apple displays ship with standard sized DisplayPort cables, so you’ll need to obtain a mini-DisplayPort to standard DisplayPort cable if you want to take advantage of that connection option.

Performance

We tested three graphics cards: the Radeon HD 5970, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and the GeForce 295 GTX. Note that the 295 GTX only ships with 1792MB of GDDR3 memory (896MB per GPU). The Nvidia GPUs on the 295 GTX have a full complement of 240 shaders, like the 285GTX, but only a 448 bit wide memory bus, similar to the GeForce GTX 260 line of graphics chips.

All games were run at two settings: 1920x1200, 4xAA and 2560x1600 4xAA. All detail settings on all games were maxed out. We also report the results from 3DMark Vantage’sdefault, performance setting and the extreme setting. In addition, we’re tossing in the results from the eVGA GeForce 285 GTX SSC and XFX Radeon HD 5870 at the 1920x1200 resolutions, so you can get an idea as to how much you gain from the dual GPU cards.

We used our standard graphics test system for benchmarking graphics cards:

Test System

Component	Model
CPU	Intel Core i7 975 @ 3.33GHz
Motherboard	Asus Rampage II ExtremeX58
Memory	6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 @ 1333MHz
Hard Drive	Seagate 7200.12 1TB
PSU	Corsair 850W
Operating System	Windows 7

The HD 5890 seems much better behaved than its predecessor, the HD 4870 X2. Although the HD 5970 fan noise became quite audible at high loads, it seemed much quieter than the 4870 X2. More telling was our experience removing the cards immediately after completed benchmarking runs. The 4870 X2 was extremely hot to the touch – we had to handle it carefully to avoid burnt fingers – while the 5970 was cooler to handle (though still very warm.) Much of this was no doubt due to the vapor chamber covering the back side of the card.

As we expected from our previous experience with the Radeon HD 5870, the dual GPU HD 5970 pretty much smokes the competition. At its targeted $599 price point, the performance needs to be stellar – and it is. Let’s check out the performance charts.

1920X1200 4XAA

Model	eVGA 285 GTX SSC	Radeon HD 4870 x2	GeForce GTX 295	XFX 5870	Radeon HD 5970
3DMark Vantage (Perf)	13941	14458	19342	17089	21089
3DMark Vantage (Extreme)	6276	6574	9241	8312	12084
HAWX	62	78	93	68	104
Far Cry 2 (Action)	47	67	62	62	75
Far Cry 2 (Ranch Long)	56	77	73	74	116
BattleForge (DX10)	46	36	33	47	61
Crysis (DX10)	22	33	29	32	44
Resident Evil 5	87	126	115	100	135
X3: Terran Conflict	93	101	100	101	107
STALKER: Clear Skies	27	38	40	36	53

2560x1600 4XAA

Model	Radeon HD 4870 X2	GeForce GTX 295	Radeon HD 5970
HAWX	53	54	76
Far Cry 2 (Action)	18	59	65
Far Cry 2 (Ranch Long)	50	55	82
BattleForge (DX10)	23	20	39
Crysis (DX10)	19	18	24
Resident Evil 5	88	85	102
X3: Terran Conflict	90	59	101
STALKER: Clear Skies	22	20	31

There’s no question the Radeon HD 5970 is the fastest single desktop graphics card you can buy today. The real question is if it’s worth $200 more than a single Radeon HD 5870. Certainly if you’re running a 1920x1200 display, we’d recommend the single GPU card. But if you’re running triple displays, or a 30-inch, 2560x1600 monitor, and you want to push polygons at full resolution, you should consider the Radeon HD 5970. But make sure you’re willing to pay the cost.

Another note: this card is enormous. It’s an actual foot-long graphics card; make sure you’ve got a case deep enough to handle it.

Then there’s the whole issue of CrossFire. The HD 5970 is essentially a pair of downclocked HD 5870s in CrossFire mode. When the game can take advantage of CrossFire – as it does in our benchmarks – you can see huge performance gains. If the game can’t make use of CrossFire, then you own a pricey single GPU card that doesn’t run as fast as the HD 5870.

But what about running TWO of these cards in CrossFire mode? Find out on the next page.

Dual-5970 CrossFire Performance

We were fortunate enough to get not one, but two 5970 cards to test in our lab. The two cards came in Falcon Northwest's brand new Talon PC, which is the first 5970-equipped system we've reviewed.

You can read our full review of the kick-ass Falcon Northwest Talon here, but the system specs are below for your reference. Note that the Talon is a Lynnfield-based Core-i7 system, overclocked to 3.93GHz, as opposed to the 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Bloomfield proc we used in our testbed to benchmark the lone 5970 card.

Specifications

Processor	Intel 2.93GHz Core i7-870 @3.83GHz
MOBO	MSI P55-GD65
RAM	8GB Crucial DDR3/1600
Videocard	Two MSI Radeon HD 5970 in CrossFire mode
Soundcard	Onboard
Storage	Two Intel X25-M 80GB in RAID 0; 1TB Samsung Spinpoint 7,20rpm hard drive
Optical	Lite-On 22x DVD burner
Case/PSU	Silverstone case with Exotix paint job and 1,000 Silverstone PSU

In addition to a 48-hour plus burn-in period, we wanted to push Falcon Northwest’s dual-Radeon HD 5970 cards on something a bit harder so we connected the FNW Talon to a 30-inch 2560x1600 panel and cranked several benchmarks to maximum. The result? Impressive. Although, the drivers we used were still fairly early, the performance of the card is unquestionable. We had some concerns of running the card in a dual x8 mode (a limitation of the P55 chipset and Lynnfield platform) instead of full x16’s that an X58 platform would give us but the results don’t seem to show too much to be concerned about. The cards seem to offer better than expected scaling, even with early drivers.

Dual-5970s on Falcon Northwest's Talon PC

	HD 5970 Crossfire On	HD 5970 Crossfire Off
3DMark Extreme Overall (1900x1200)	18954	11686
3DMark Extreme GPU (1900x1200)	18763	11384
3DMark Extreme CPU (1900x1200)	23498	23561
3DMark Extreme GPU (2560x1600)	13494	9076
3DMark Extreme CPU (2560x1600)	23387	23399
Crysis, Very High, (2560x1600)	34.4 FPS	27.1 FPS
Far Cry 2 Ultra High (2560x1600)	185.2 FPS	107.4 FPS

Crysis, 1900x1200 (NO AA)	66.3 FPS	(did not run)
Crysis, 1900x1200 (16X AA)	64.3 FPS	(did not run)

Note that in Crysis, enabling 16X Anti-Aliasing doesn't seem to affect the framerate with CrossFire enabled.

Finally, a note on overclocking. The AMD overvolting tool has two settings for core and memory. You can overvolt the GPUs, overvolt the memory or both. Using the tool, we pumped up both voltage settings, then found the card to be stable at 870MHz core and 1250MHz memory (17 and 25% respectively.) Curiously, though, we saw little actual performance gain. 3DMark Vantage (extreme setting) only saw a 1% increase, from 12084 to 12182. We got two additional FPS in Crysis and either no increase or slight decreases in frame rate for Far Cry 2 and STALKER: Clear Skies. We probably need to do a better job of balancing memory and core clocks, but our initial experiences suggest that overclocking may not be worth the effort.

December to Bring Lower Memory Prices

Paul Lilly — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:00:13 -0600

There's not much time left to get on Santa's 'Nice' list, and if your'e hoping to score some RAM this holiday shopping season, that's a place you'll want to be. Why? Because memory makers are forecasting a DRAM price drop in December.

In addition to the usual seasonal demand, DRAM vendors say it's likely chip makers who have already turned a profit will decide to flex their cost competitiveness muscle and slash prices to drive up shipments.

The latest rumblings run counter to previously reports which suggested that major DRAM producers would try to push chip prices upward, but that no longer appears likely. The opposite has already begun, with the average spot price for branded 1Gb DDR2 chips trending down 0.76 percent to close at $2.60 on Tuesday, according to data from DRAMeXchange.

CyberPower Announces USB 3.0 and SATA 6G for Entire Gamer Xtreme line

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:08:12 -0600

Intel has drawn a lot of flak from various quarters for delaying the adoption of USB 3.0 and SATA-III. But lesser known players seem far more eager to make the leap to these new standards. CyberPower has decided to include USB 3.0 and SATA-III in all the upcoming models in its Gamer Xtreme range of desktops.

“CyberPower customers can configure and order a Gamer Xtreme system with the super speed USB 3.0/SATA III interface today. With Intel's latest i5/i7 processors and P55/X58 chipsets, you'll enjoy maximum performance today and be ready for tomorrow. Both USB 3.0 and SATA III are backward compatible to assure users their current peripherals will not become obsolete,” the company said in a laconic press release. The Gamer Xtreme range starts at $749.